It was, you may have noticed, Hallowe’en last Saturday. Generally speaking, this is something that The Builder and I ignore, although last year we did have some charming little moppets, accompanied by their very polite parents come a-knocking on the door in search of treats. Fortunately, I happened to have some candy about the place, and also some small oranges. They got a bit of each!
This year I decided I really couldn’t be bothered and locked the back door and the gate at about 5, when it went dark. I also, most unusually, pulled the curtains closed, thus declaring us Not Available for the delivery of either treats or fruit.
We settled in for a cosy evening in and pretty much ignored the sounds of teenage merriment which we heard outside from time to time.
We also ignored the sound of Max barking with determination. Max is always barking. Had the door and gate been unlocked, we would probably have gone to investigate but they weren’t and as it happens on this occasion we didn’t.
The Builder was talking to Steve yesterday. Apparently, the people in the lovely, red-brick house diagonally opposite were having a Hallowe’en party on Saturday evening. Their children are quite young; the oldest would only be 11 or 12 at most. It seems that a young man of around 17 or 18 decided that he wanted to attend the party and was prevented by the adults in the house. For reasons which I am sure made sense to him at the time, in retribution he smashed one of the large windows. Apparently, by putting his fist through the window. This did not do his fist much good. It also attracted the attention of the adults who came out after him. He, showing a surprising level of common sense, ran away. The grown ups called the police.
It seems that the boy ran down the lane to the sewage treatment centre, then cut across the fields at the back of our garden, aiming, we think, for the alleyway further up, which would have dropped him unobtrusively back onto QVR. Instead, he fetched up in Steve and Debbie’s garden, where the gate was locked thus preventing him escaping, and where there was a VERY barky dog in the kitchen. Steve let Max out. The boy tried to hide. You can’t hide from Max! Very foolishly, when Steve went down to enquire why he was hiding at the bottom of the garden and why his arm was bleeding with vigour, instead of apologising nicely and going away, the boy decided to have a go at him. Steve, of course, knew that the police were at the house across the road, grabbed the boy, frogmarched him through his house and across the road and into the grateful arms of the gendarmerie who were about to go out hunting.
It’s the most excitement our corner of Tupton has seen for years. And we were completely oblivious, sat in our cosy lounge room and ignoring the outside world!
In addition to losing our window cleaner, we also appear to have misplaced our neighbour in the adjoining semi. I noticed her packing her car as full as it could possibly be packed on Monday morning. Her car was not there when I got back at about quarter to ten on Monday evening. It wasn’t there when I got back yesterday evening either. And the lounge room curtains were open. The room appears to be empty of furniture. I suspect her of having moved!
Barb has been to see The Builder’s mother. She reports that Gwen is in reasonable spirits and seems quite chirpy but that her sciatica is very painful. She also says that Gwen is beginning to be quite repetitive in what she tells you, although I think that is not uncommon in older people who live alone, have few people to talk to and for whom very little ever happens. And now that there isn’t a warden resident in the complex she lives in, I don’t think much is happening in the way of organised activities in the communal lounge room. We will go down for a Sunday in a couple of weeks but we can’t really go down much more than we already do. If nothing else, it would bankrupt us fairly quickly!
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